The ringing in my ears had slowly begun to fade. I had no doubt that there was permanent damage done, though. As I trudged over rubble on my bare feet, I was half-lidded with dizzy tiredness and a splitting headache. I wasn't sure what I was about to do, but I knew that one way or another, this nightmare was going to end.

There was bitter dust on my tongue and doubtlessly more of it in my lungs. After years of keeping my powers a secret and avoiding the world of heroes and villains, I couldn't have picked a worse day to turn on a dime. I knew why I'd done it, and I had even managed to survive up to this point, but that didn't make it any less insane.

Just like the man in the bunker, though, it was guilt that had driven me.

Fifth Street was only a few blocks away from where the fight had been going on; just close enough for me to walk to in my haggard state. I had to assume that the rampager's power had a limited range that he could control his puppets from within. Every power had drawbacks, and no one was unbeatable, as Stumblebum had said.

Well, I thought, remembering his full comment, there was one exception.

The clothes store I saw in my vision was waiting for me up ahead. Its windows were shattered, with piles of frilly items thrown across the floor. Expensive handbags and jeans. Although it looked quite different from the one in my memory, the sign out front was unmistakable, and that was what had led me here.

This close to the conflict, there was not going to be anyone still around except combatants. If my power hadn't been so burnt out, I would've searched for the rampager's aura and found it easily, but as it stood my eyes were all I had. He could have run or hid, and I wouldn't have stood a chance of finding him. Yet somehow, I knew I didn't have to look far.

Over the years I had watched people and learned how they ticked. I didn't have to use my powers all the time to intuit what their next move was going to be, therefore. Everything he had done up to this point had been a meticulously planned act of cowardice. Something I knew a lot about. There was no reason to believe that he would break his streak now, then.

And my intuition was seldom wrong.

Seeing him for the first time, the emotions that welled up in me were intense. I wanted to scream and burst into tears all at once, but I was simply too tired for any of it.

The rampager was sitting just inside the clothes store on one of the empty wooden tables. He hung his head, looking up at me through dark eyes framed in long and greying hair. "So, you weren't lying. You really did figure me out."

"Yes," I said, keeping my voice low to avoid a stutter. It wasn't weakness that I wanted to hide, though. It was anger.

"Where's the rest of them?" he asked. "Where are the other heroes?"

"Doing cleanup." I continued my approach until I was standing at the entrance. "It's j-just me for now."

The monster frowned. He was a pudgy man, with deep dark circles under his eyes and painted blue nails on his hands. "That's fitting, I guess. I'll surrender to you, then. I'm not going to run."

I took my seat across the room from him on the empty windowsill. "I know," I said. He assumed that I told the heroes everything, and probably that I had known exactly who he was and what he looked like, leaving no possible chances for a lasting escape. Psychics were hard to under-estimate when they were telling your secrets in front of you, and I had played to that fear. Even though I was working with nothing but a hunch and the snapshot I'd stolen from his eyes, he had no idea of my limits.

Silence reigned for a few minutes. He refused to meet my eyes as I stared at him, instead shifting uncomfortably. Finally, I asked, "What's your name?"

His voice was soft and timid. "Jayden."

"How did it f-feel, Jayden?"

He didn't have to think about his answer. "It was the worst pain I've felt in my entire life."

I nodded slowly. "Do you think about how other p-people felt, maybe?"

This time he drew a blank expression, as if he didn't understand the question. Then, there was a coldness that rose in his eyes. He realized that I was talking about his victims. "What, do you want to know why I did it? Because it doesn't really matter now, does it?"

"No. Not what I asked."

"Yeah, then, I thought about it," was all he said.

Silence stretched on in another long pause. This time, he was the one to speak first. "Are you not going to arrest me? Hello? Adrian is your name, right? I heard it back there."

His words caused me to think long and hard. My hands were shaking at my side this whole time, and every muscle in my body was tight. Seeing the horrific pale grey monster sitting in front of me as a sallow blob of putrid ignorance, I marveled at what power could do. To give a creature like this so much power... it was some kind of sick cosmic joke.

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And he’d used it in the only way he knew how. To entertain himself.

Still, I simply nodded again. "Correct. Yes."

"You're not a hero in the city. Or a villain. Or a rogue. I did so much research before I picked this city, I just... I can't get over it. Where did you come from? You had to be waiting for me or something."

I took a deep calming breath before I explained. "In a way, yes. You wouldn't know because you're n-not local though. We had a rampager like you before... Not as special. Just a guy covered in... blades. He got some bad news one day at the mall. Wife d-divorced. Dead. I don't remember, but his power triggered, and he went crazy. It took the heroes t-ten m-minute t-t-t..." My throat clinched up as I spoke. It was getting too hard to tell this story.

"What does that have to do with me?" he asked, impatient.

He didn't know it yet, but it had everything to do with him.

"It was three y-years ago," I said, flatly.

"So?"

I could still picture their faces perfectly. It was Christmas shopping time at the mall, and we'd all gone together. My parents and I hadn't always gotten along, but that night everything was perfect. We were cracking jokes and laughing in a clothes store much like the one where we both sat now, and that was when the panic started.

The red hospital bracelet was still attached to my wrist, and I held it up to show to him. "That was when I g-got my powers."

I watched my parents die that day, while I did nothing. The stress had caused them to manifest.

The bastard's eyes grew large, and he turned a deeper shade of pale. "Where are the other heroes, Adrian?" He asked, more urgently this time.

My mind was finally made up. A calm had suddenly swept over me, and I admitted to myself what I was about to do. "They're not c-coming."

I didn't get into this fight for revenge, I thought. I left that bunker to finally be the hero I was meant to be.

When I looked at the man before me, though, there was no doubt in my mind. Perhaps it was selfish, but I didn't care anymore; not after what he'd done. It was fate that had brought us face to face, and I planned to kill him myself. I had to bring it all full circle.

And so, I stood up and began to approach over broken glass, never flinching once. The rampager, seeing what was about to happen, jumped forward and threw a wild punch, taking me off guard. He was not as slow as he looked, and he wasn't about to let me simply put him down without a fight either.

With my reflexes fried, I hadn't even begun to react before the blow struck my ear. I toppled over like a house of cards, and he wasted no time in running. He attempted to hurdle me and make for the exit, but my hand snagged his foot, causing him to stumble and fall at the threshold.

He caught himself and cried out in pain, his palms shredded on the glass debris. Once recovered though, he began to limp away as fast as he could. It took me far longer than it had him to get up as my head swam from that punch. He was already halfway across the street and clearly too fast for me to catch as I did.

In that moment, I chose to double down rather than think of giving up.

"THEY DON'T KNOW!" I shouted.

He turned to look at me, and as he started to comprehend my meaning, I saw five different kinds of fear wrestling on his face. He was afraid of any kind of real confrontation, even with someone as obviously beaten as I was. Yet, if he believed what I was saying, then this was his last chance to spend a life outside of supermax prison.

I've seen your face, I thought. If you go now, you won't make it twenty-four hours on the run. But if I haven’t even told the other heroes how your power works yet, well, then you can still make this all go away, can’t you? It would be so easy.

I smiled as he started walking back towards me, a feral glint in his eye.

"That's r-right," I said. "They don't know your s-secret. Only me."

He reached down and picked up a brick from the sidewalk, breaking out into a full charge. From behind me I pulled a pair of jeans from the ground. As he came within striking range, he reared back for a single dramatic blow, aiming to knock my fucking brains out and splatter them over the tile.

All I had to do was grab his shirt and pull him forward. I stepped aside, shoving his weight into the table and slamming his upper body down. Once I got in behind him, I threw the jeans over his head and caught his neck in their crotch. Then, I crossed my hands over and started to pull.

He sputtered and bashed his hands against the table, but with my weight on top of him, he didn't have the strength to stand up. He was sandwiched between me and the table. I was larger, and my legs braced to keep us from falling. Even as he reached back and scratched at my scalp trying to grab a handful of something, anything to save himself, I stayed still and quiet.

There were no sounds in the shop except for our struggles. The table started to slide beneath us, but I kept with it until it locked in place against the register, knocking over a stand of jewelry on the way.

I counted the seconds of my hold. Twenty-eight. Twenty-nine. Thirty. Thirty-one...

His flailing slowed until it stopped entirely, but I didn't let go. Only once a full minute had been counted, did I finally allow myself to collapse on the floor, watching as his doughy body slipped in its own sweat to settle on the tile beside me.

My eyes began to flutter shut from the exhaustion, but that was when I heard it. Jayden hacked and coughed, sucking air back into his lungs. Despite all of that, he was not dead yet. Killing him was not going to be that easy.

It can never be that easy.

To finish it, I grabbed the brick he had tried to hit me with and crawled on top of him.

"...Wait, you don't-" he tried to say, but I brought it down on him with a wet thud. Again and again I raised it up, using the edge and using the flat side to cave in his head. He kept trying to speak, but soon it was nothing but gurgling breaths. Then, nothing.

I went on until I was sure beyond a shadow of a doubt that he wasn't just unconscious. He was gone.

When it was all done, I used the table to stand, though my hands were so slick that I could barely hold on. My feet were bleeding pretty badly, I saw. My ears were bleeding too. But I was alive. I found a pair of women's sandals in the store that barely fit me, and I washed out my cuts and washed off my face in the bathroom before putting them on. When I was done, I returned and stood over the body for a while and watched it, not sure of what to do next. I was trying to understand how it had come to this.

I had been given a second chance to do what I couldn't do the first time, and I had to live with that choice. It was the choice I always wished I had made. You liked to fantasize about killing the badguy and saving the day. That is, until you've actually done it and you see what it looks like.

If I'm a superhero now, I thought, then I'm going to do it my way. No regrets.

A ruined city, a mangled corpse, and me, half dead in the middle of it all. A hero called Headcase.

"Yeah. F-fuck it,” I said. The line had been crossed.